Ten Things You Might Not Know About Fire Emblem

Whatever happened to Fire Emblem 64? What's with Casual Mode? How come we had to wait so long for the Fire Emblem series to come West? Did You Know Gaming has the answers.

It's hard to imagine Nintendo's flagship strategy role-playing game series had six games and thirteen years under its belt before it made its way over to the States, though knowing that makes it much easier to comprehend the series' importance to the genre. Here's some of the trivia delivered in Did You Know Gaming's latest.

Nintendo was making a Fire Emblem game for the Nintendo 64 called *drumroll please* Fire Emblem 64. The game never surfaced, but it's possible assets from it were used for Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance for the Gamecube.

One reason suggested for the cancellation of Fire Emblem 64 were legal precedings between developer Intelligent Systems and Nintendo against series creator Shouzou Kaga. Kaga left Intelligent Systems after the fifth game in the Fire Emblem series was complete, forming his own studio to work on a PlayStation strategy RPG called Tear Ring Saga (originally called Emblem Saga, though Nintendo quickly squashed that). Tear Ring Saga was released in Japan in 2001. Nintendo won its second lawsuit against Kaga's Tirnanog studio and was awarded 76 million yen, but the court allowed Tirnanog to continue selling their game.

While Marth's appearance in Super Smash Bros. Melee was party responsible for the Fire Emblem franchise to finally come Stateside, the success of Intelligent System's Advance Wars for the Game Boy Advance helped change Nintendo's ideas of the game Western audiences would play.

The first Fire Emblem title to be released in North America was the seventh in the series, a Game Boy Advance game simply called Fire Emblem.

It's become somewhat of a tradition to make Fire Emblem games released in the West easier than the Japanese versions. Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn did not do this, and was widely criticised for its difficulty in the States.

Fire Emblem: Awakening was criticised by fans of the series for introducing "Casual Mode," which allowed players to turn off permanent death for their troops. It wasn't the first Fire Emblem game with the feature, however. 2010's Japan-only DS release, Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem ~Heroes of Light and Shadow~ featured the option as well.

Due to declining sales of the series, Fire Emblem: Awakening would have been the last game in the series if it didn't sell at least 250,000 copies. That's why it's one of the most feature-rich installments of the series. To date, the game has sold more than a million copies worldwide.

The series is greatly inspired by mythology. The character Marth, for example, is named after the Roman god of war, Mars.

During the development of Fire Emblem: Awakening, developers briefly pondered setting the game on the planet Mars.

A two-episode Fire Emblem anime starring "Mars" instead of "Marth" was released in the U.S. in 1997, six years before the game franchise made its North American debut. The voice actor for Prince Mars in the anime, Hikaru Midorikawa, voices the character in the Super Smash Bros. series to this day.

Cool video. I still need to play Radiant Dawn, even though most people didn't seem to like it that much...it can't be worse than Shadow Dragon! (I realise that game is a remake, but they could've put in more modern gameplay mechanics imo).